They had four children, including baseball statistician Ernest Lanigan, and newspaper sports editor and baseball writer Harold Lanigan.

In addition to having parents who were both writers and editors (George Thomas Lanigan and Bertha Spink Lanigan ), Lanigan was the nephew, on his mother's side, of The Sporting News founders Al Spink and Charles Spink, and one of five men in his family, including J. G. Taylor Spink and C.C. Johnson Spink, to gain acclaim as a newspaperman.